Tuesday night, the pilots of at least 11 commercial planes flying into New York City-area airports reported having lasers from the ground shined at their aircraft, including in some cases their cockpits, according to an analysis of air traffic control audio obtained by 404 Media. In some of the audio, pilots can be heard saying the lasers are “definitely directed straight at us,” that the lasers “are tracking us,” and, at one point air traffic control says “yep, we’ve been getting them all night, like literally 30 of them.”
The air traffic control recordings, which come from Newark Airport in New Jersey and JFK Airport in New York City, suggest that people in New Jersey are shining powerful lasers at passenger airplanes during one of the busiest travel times of the year amid politician- and media-stoked panic about “mystery drones” in New Jersey. The FBI warned people in New Jersey Tuesday not to shoot at drones or shine lasers at them. A military pilot flying over New Jersey also said he was injured by a laser earlier this week. The air traffic control analysis shared with 404 Media was done by John Wiseman, whose work analyzing open-source flight data has previously uncovered secret FBI surveillance programs. His analysis suggests that people blasting “drones” with lasers is not some theoretical issue, but instead could cause real disruption or harm to commercial pilots.
“Getting lasered about two miles up, our right hand side, our present position,” the pilot of American Airlines flight 586, a flight from Chicago to Newark, said.
“Okay, yep, we’ve been getting them all night, like literally 30 of them,” air traffic control responds. “Do you know what color it was?”
“Green and they are tracking us,” the pilot of American Airlines 586 says.